With honourable exceptions, airport terminals were once a predictable bunch: rectilinear hangars of steel and glass with an overhanging roof for kerbside departures and arrivals. They mostly still follow this model but there’s been a design shift in recent years, with airports as gardens, like Singapore Changi, or airports of latticed timber and tapering stone set out like a Saudi mountain village (Abha International, due to open in 2028). The Jackson Hole Airport in Wyoming masquerades as a mid-century ski lodge complete with fireplaces.

This shift reflects a breakdown in sequential architectural orthodoxies – modernism, postmodernism and the curves of parametricism, a style made possible by the digital and made famous by Frank Gehry and Zaha Hadid. Instead, we are seeing everything everywhere all at once; classicism and Afro-futurism, rammed earth walls and AI-driven forms.